California gunman had ‘kill list’

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – A gunman who shot dead his former college professor in California before taking his own life also murdered his wife as he worked off a “kill list,” authorities and media reports said.

Mainak Sarkar, 38, killed Ashley Hasti in Minnesota and then drove 3,220-kilometer to Los Angeles where he shot his former professor William Klug on Wednesday, according to police and local media. Officials in Hennepin County, in the midwestern state of Minnesota, said Hasti and Sarkar were married on June 14, 2011. It was unclear if the couple were still married at the time of their deaths.

Klug, 39, a father of two who taught mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), was shot in his office on campus before Sarkar turned the gun on himself, police said. A note in Sarkar’s backpack – in which he asked that someone look after his cat – led police to his home in Minnesota, where a “kill list” was found, Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck told reporters. He said Klug was named on the list along with another UCLA professor and the deceased woman, apparently Hasti.

She was found dead of a gunshot wound at her home in the small Minnesota town of Brooklyn Park. Beck said investigators believe Sarkar killed her earlier in the week before driving to Los Angeles to continue his rampage, armed with two semi-automatic pistols and multiple rounds of ammunition. “We believe he went there to kill two faculty of UCLA,” Beck said. “He was only able to locate one. The second member was off campus.”